Live Edit: Working outside your style

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Transcript

If it has a payoff that

warrants the time difference, then great.

But you know, it all comes down to pay offs and that's what readers want. They're looking for that payoff. You know, if you're going to annoy me with this.

what do I get? amazing. If she swallowed the raindrop and then we became the girl.

Depends on what they're doing. But yeah.

That would have been so cool. Would have been if.

Or if we'd stayed the raindrop. But we just took control of the girl now we don't know her name because we're parasites inside of her. Controlling her brain.

Releasing your inner dragon.

Okay, so we're going to destroy another human beings soul. No. We're going to just talk about the writing. We're going to we're going to edit another piece. Another brave soul has sent us a piece for critiquing

just because this is at the top of my mind, because I literally said it before I hit the record button. Remember,

I get how terrifying it is to let people read your work.

I get what it feels like, you know, when when you send us something and we you know, we're looking at it, we're going, okay, well, this line is a little telly or or, you know, this is what we feel you did wrong or whatever you author intrude or whatever. What you hear is this part of your soul sucks and you're a bad human being because of this.

I get it. But a part of growing as a writer is getting over that.

I say all the time in the writer's room, you do not get to decide if you've written something good that is not in your wheelhouse. You do not have that authority. You're not even a part of that equation of whether you wrote something well or not.

Only the reader, you know the term art is in the eye of the beholder. You are not the beholder. You're the creator. So when we're editing this stuff, just remember all we're doing is showing you ways to make the widget the product for consumption better so that more people want to consume it. It's a business. It is not a personal thing.

It is not. And I know that it's hard. It's so hard to separate your your love and feelings and all of that from this creation, this baby, this thing that you've done. But that is important as a professional writer, because I promise you, if you publish something on Amazon, there ain't a single reviewer out there who gives a crap about your feelings, like, they're just going to destroy you and they're going to.

And matter of fact, some of them out there are going to enjoy, destroying you. They have fun doing it. And those reviews are forever. They don't come down. You can't get them taken down. You can't get them deleted there. It doesn't matter what they say. Amazon is going to leave them up there in perpetuity. So by having your stuff critiqued in a writer's group or sending to us and letting us do it, this is way better than having a, you know, a one star review that says, I'm only given this a one star because I has to to give it to tell you how awful it is.

Otherwise I would have given it a zero star. Like, I don't want a review like that. That's that is painful to read. And so that's what these critiques are. They're here just to point things out, to let you see ways of making a better widget that more people are going to want to consume. That's it. That's all we're doing.



indeed. Okay. I mean, all of those things are true. And, you know.

That's yeah, I just yeah, like I said, we just had this we, we were having a discussion with some of the people that are watching. And if you want to watch live, everybody is invited to join us while we're recording this. We do it on

Pacific Time. You know, West Coast America, it's we start at 930 in the morning, Finland.

We start at.

730 in the evening. Okay.

730 in the evening on a Thursday. All you got to do is go over to the writers room, dot us, and just join the free area. You don't have to pay anything. Join the free area. And then every week, if you want, you can join us and chat between things. You can send comments while we're doing the

the podcast so that you can be a part of the discussion.

So yeah, join the writers.

Yeah. And I mean, I don't mean to sound dismissive of everything you said. Everything you said is very valid to you know, you do have to learn to take that criticism.

Yeah. No, no I like that indeed was pretty much all I left you room for. I didn't leave anything else. So that's why I was laughing. I was laughing. I wasn't laughing at You are. you're belittling me. I was laughing at how I left you nothing. I ate all of it. I took the pie and I just. I only took one piece.

It was just the whole piece. And I ate it all. Okay? I love this art up here. That is cool.

Yeah, it was actually. So the the layout might seem a little weird, and that is because it was sent to us as a PDF, so it's been converted into Word for editing. So disregard the layout for the purpose of critiquing it. But it was really well laid out like, you know, this city and the whole like the typesetting is actually quite good.

Yeah.

The funny thing is I actually, I don't typesetting word, but I do still I'm very particular at how my word documents look. So I don't have drop caps like the big T, but I absolutely do have chapter headers and I have artwork in it and I have, I don't know, it just makes me feel good. I don't when I typeset, I do it again in the typesetting program, but I still want my word document to look decent.

So as interior art comes in, I'll add it to the word document.

The I do typeset in Word and I typeset as I go. Yeah. So my my chapters of finalized as I go with them.

And word is not a typesetting program.

We can agree to disagree. So so this is chapter one and it is titled The Flood and the Forge. The sky wept. It's tears smothered the mountainside, each alike in shape and size, touch and tempo save one one drop held iron in its heart.

It had lost no in the warmth of a shattered palm. Each time the girl shoved her fingers back into their berths, the drop skin brimmed over the cuff of a gantlet. Her blood steamed in the rays of a sunset, spent quick, uneven steps, rattled the leather plates once worn like skin with every foot fall, the grieves unwound from her shins and grave.

Though her and grave though her wound, she ran to stop there. I think it is a touch on the omniscient, which is fine. It is really well, it is well-written.

So yes, but I do want to push back on one thing. Yeah, you have sacrificed the reader being able to see exactly what's going on for flowery prose. And I'm all for flowery prose. But when all I get is flowery prose, me personally, as a reader, I'm not connected to it. And so that's my problem. It is beautifully written.

No negative about that. But like when we got like with every footfall, our, you know.

I was on board, I was on board until the end of it had lost no in the warmth of the shattered palm. And then when I read each time the girl shoved her fingers back into their berths, I was like, How do fingers have berths? What is she wearing? Like, How was she?

But it's also where did she even come from?

Yeah.

What am I on? I mean, I was. I was in the sky falling over a mountainside, and that was beautiful. I love this opening line. These opening two lines are literally like the one drop a save one. One drop held iron in its heart like that. That was a huge hook for me. But then we start to develop what that is, what that means.

So we have it had last known the warmth of a shattered palm. I don't really get the imagery there. I don't know what that I don't know what I'm supposed to be connecting there. And then we're instantly just in this girl.

Yeah.

So where did this this beautiful imagery of this one raindrop go? So again, I don't know what she's running on. Like we have the

we have something about quick, uneven steps rattled the leather plates once worn like skin. So is this on the ground? Like, it's beautiful, but I don't know what to paint in my mind.

Yeah, So I think it's on the girl. I think the girl was wearing the leather plates

because with every footfall, the greaves unwound from her shins.

Again, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. You have sacrificed clarity for pretty pros. Now, some people, that's what they want to write. I'm not. I'm not dogging this. I'm not. Yeah, this is not because I don't write pretty prose and I do it on purpose. Matter of fact,

one of my reviewers, one of my professional reviewers, wrote something, and when I read it, I went, Hey, finally someone gets me.

And then I read it again. I was like, Or are they insulting me? And then about six months later, I met this guy at a convention and I asked him, you know, were you insulting me with that line in your review? Because it was a five star review, or were you complimenting me because I took it as a compliment because, no, I was insulting you.

And the line was while Drake is an incredibly immersive writer, I never found myself marveling over his use of prose. And so when I met him, he said, Yeah, you are such a strong writer. I think you can write beautifully as well as vividly. And I was like, I don't know if that's even possible, because the problem is when you write Vivid, it's very much the reason why people like how I write.

The people that like I write, they constantly know where they're at. They constantly can see everything. They constantly can feel everything. They constantly know what what they're supposed to be feeling as this story's rolling on. Which means I stay away from pretty prose on purpose, because to me, pretty prose is the same thing. If somebody stops and goes, Wow, look at that line.

Look at how he wrote that line. You're not watching the movie in your head anymore. It's just like if you read a line, you're like, I have no idea what this person is saying. Like, it's not even English is that it's punctuation even supposed to go there like, well, like when finger's turned into a girl.

Weirdly. So that threw me.

Right.

Each time to go shoved her fingers back into their berths.

Because this word document, it dropped the fee. Yeah. That work. And you hit it and you were like, That's not a word.

Yeah.

You know, And so but.

Even in the PDF each like that.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

But the, but what the birth is, is the birth is the fingers of the glove.

Because I get, I get what he's saying now that I've analyzed. But it took me a while to pause. What's going on here.

My point. Yeah, my point is, is that all of this is beautiful, well-written, Absolutely gritty prose as you can get. But basically you're describing that there's rain that is dripping inside of the girls gloves. Yeah. Like that's what's going on here. But you have to actually analyze it, which means now I'm not painting a movie in my head.

And then now again, I'm not knocking this. If this is the type of writing you're going for, God bless you. That is a valid writing style. Yeah, but the thing is, is that a lot of readers today aren't going to put that kind of effort. You're writing for a smaller niche of readers than the mass market. Mass market is who I write for.

I want to get as many people reading my stuff as I possibly can. Not every writer wants that. And so I'm not saying change this. I'm not saying this is bad, I'm not saying anything. I'm just pointing out that while yes, it is wonderfully written and beautifully beautifully written prose, you're sacrificing the readers ability to just follow along and see something painted in their brain.

And I think I do have a problem with and grave. Though her wound, she ran a filler. Grammatically, there is something actually wrong with that sentence. I'm not entirely sure what it's missing.

The was.

Yeah. And graves of her wound was. Yes. Yeah. It feels off without that was a.

Lot of pretty prose will go down that so like this author may actually go No no no no I don't want the was there I'm doing that on purpose because again it adds a lyrical tone to it. But again this is just a different of styles.

The reason why I don't go down the lyrical path, the poetic path, because that's what poetry I mean, how many times you read a poem and it has some weird sentence that isn't exactly grammatically correct.

Yeah.

But it hits the the feeling of what the author is trying to do. So again, it's not that we can go, this is wrong. This is a typo. You should have put it was there. I guarantee you the writer did this on purpose. Okay. But they're sacrificing again. You're sacrificing the readers ability to just fall into the story with the fact that you're writing in this very poetic, very pretty prose way.

There is absolutely a market for this hundred percent. So I'm not you know, again, I'm walking a tightrope here because I'm not trying to dog this writer in any way, shape or form. But from a business standpoint, there's going to be a lot of people because most books are bought on look inside or recommendations. So they're going to look inside of this.

There's gonna be a lot of readers who do not like pretty prose because they can't just fall into the story and they're going to move. I think.

You could. I think you could do the pretty prose if you were just a little bit more clear.

Right? 100% right.

Each time the girl shoved her fingers back into the glove or in like, just just make it a little bit more clear.

Is that opening line of the way that we have lost? I hate the we've lost the little drop because I really like I can't say enough how much I love this guy. Wept. Yes. Now I think it should be one paragraph. And I actually think that the paragraph break should be between palm and each. So the sky wept.

It's tears smothered on the outside all the way down to shattered Palm. I feel like that's all one paragraph. And then the new paragraph is each time. Yeah, because now we're in at least the we've lost. Now if we bring in the droplet like the droplet is, happens to be,

you know, somewhere in on this not lit or something like that.

And I think that's what we're getting at with the.

was on her form, she forced her hand in and then it got tossed outside. That's that's the image that I'm assuming it's been gone for. Maybe.

But again, we've lost it. We've lost the connection to the drop. And so now we're floating. And and as a reader, I don't know where who I am, what I'm supposed to. And again, that's why I say and one of the steps of of scene setting or one of the steps of writing a scene is scene setting, which means I need to know who said I'm in and you know what's around me.

I need to be able to put myself somewhere as quickly as possible. And you did that with the drop of rain? I just did. I was a drop of rain, which is awesome. And I don't mind knowing that that's not actually the character of the story. I mean, obviously we're not going to follow a drop of water through a fantasy story.

That would be weird. I guess you could do it, but I doubt we do that. But anyway, so.

You're just so I think like, I think if you if you maybe just made that like, as you say, made that one paragraph and then just make it a little bit more clear what is going on with a drop of rain and have it like and show the girl a little bit more completely with a bit more clarity because like, I will tolerate pretty I guess like I will actually read, you know, Lord of the Rings and so on.

Like I will tolerate the kind of British prose going on. You see. But I got confused here, right?

Yeah. Again, the, the way I want to kind of amend your statement is doing that will increase the amount of people who want to read it. Yeah. Not that we're saying that this is wrong. It's just that on the scope of things, it depends on where you want to be as a writer.

Yeah, Yeah. I think if you make it a little bit more clear, a little easier to pass the image. Yes. You're going to get more buy in. Yes. From a larger audience of reader.

Yes. And the hardest thing to do is to sell is to make a fan. Yeah. Which means.

So rocks and roots ushered her downhill with a brush, gave way to wheat and barley and pockets of saplings, thick grain pummeled the timber about her. She let the fog draw into the forest steps to the forge wagon, waiting just as her teacher had promised. Marius. It mopped beneath a frame of oak and poles, and it mocked beneath a frame of oaken, poles and tarp me that I.

Stuck like, Stop here. That's such a beautiful line. Yeah. Meritless at most between a frame of oak and poles and tarp. Like the wagon. There's no horses. Yes. And it moped beneath a frame of oak and poles and tarp. Just paint this picture of this. Just wet, drenched, covered wagon that's sagging and. And all of that. Like, it's a beautiful image, you know, beautiful line.

But there's a lot of like the root, the root rocks and roots was also reasonable. Like I had an idea of at least the environment she's running, right. You know so yeah, little bit more of that clarity. Right?

This is the point when you start, you can write really pretty prose and still paint a picture for your reader to be grounded inside. Yeah.

Yeah. The chapter of Rain upon the Canvas beckoned, while her heart begged both legs to crumple and curl like a wind at hope. But she was here for him. For the brass robot lurking just beyond the fire's choral glow. So all those songs were true. Okay, cool. A moment. The fellas here. I don't know who thinks us. And I'll tell you why.

I don't know who thinks us. I've been a raindrop. I know I haven't actually been the girl. I don't feel like I've been the girl you have.

Once it gets to rocks and roots ushered her downhill. And then especially in the she let the fall draw her into the forest. Yes, so you have. But yeah, it is kind of it's I'm not denying. You know, I.

It to me this for a moment. I was like, is this the girl's internal thought like because it it's yeah. Also, I am not completely fond of the sentence in a pretty prose since I don't.

Even I have no idea what that looks like.

So. So I understand what it looks like, but I don't like it because we've already described the wagon. Now we're saying the chatter of rain upon the canvas beckoned. As in it's calling her in good, but her heart is begging her legs to crumple and curl like a wind hawk because she's exhausted. It's it's muscle, but.

Right.

But I got that. The thing is, I don't like the sentence because we've already got the the wagon described up at the top to now repeat the canvas feels like overwriting.

I can say that.

I would actually perhaps just cut this whole section of be like her heart begged both legs to crumple and curl like a winded hawk.

See for me that the imagery that gets thrown for me is the end curl.

I sort of like the wind at Hawk here, to be honest, because like a winded hawk is not going to crumple and curl. It's going to drop like a stone, like.

So, yeah, I mean, there's an argument for that, but the legs don't curl. So that's what threw me out with. That's why I say I don't know how to paint that because I don't know how to paint legs curling.

As opposed to crumpling. Yeah.

Well that.

Is not.

The sentence is not the sentence I think can do some.

Some thought but again this is where we're, if every single thing is pretty prose then every line means that the reader has to work they’re having to literally

put effort in to figuring out every single moment that they're reading.

I mean, if if that line was smoother, I wouldn't need to, you know what I mean? Like, you can make this work right? But you're going to need to put every single line needs to be not only pretty but also clear.

Right. That's the balance that you need to strike in my opinion, if you're going to go with a more pretty prose, but then you do something like the two sentence in the row in the last of this page you have, you've already point out the inner monologue kind of comes out of nowhere, and we don't really know 100% if we're grounded in it.

But they also throw in like we feel like we're in a fantasy world and you're going to drop in the brass robot lurking just behind the fires for blow. First of all, where the fire comes from, I don't remember a fire being brought in. Is it just me or did that just come out of the fire?

Came out of nowhere. Okay. I'm okay with the brass robot, though, because this could be a sci fi like that. The cover would have told us that or the back or whatever, you know.

Okay, so you don't know the genre?

No, I'm not 100% sure. Okay.

All right, then. Yeah. Because for me, I'm. I'm definitely in fantasy. And then you throw this brass robot without explaining anything, so that's why it hurt me. But. But I'm glad to know that I didn't miss.

Not the fire. Fire the fire the first time, because, I mean, it's raining. We've got the moping wagon. Where's the far.

Right?

Got the boards that the ancients sent their little justice pipes indeed made up his bones and wires his sinews. Yet the girl found herself fixated instead upon the bulky rock that pulsed amber, where a man's eyes would roost. She had caught him deep in a strange dance before his forge, since no legs stood beneath him, one arm bore his weight while the other raised the hammer into the tempest.

Okay.

So another reason why you feel this is more omniscient and I do not understand why so many writers love doing this. If you're trying to write it in limited, then you're not the one telling the story. And again, I don't think this is limited. I actually think the way. So I'm just pointing this out, not necessarily to change this, but just to show other listeners.

If you're trying to write in Limited, it means the character is the narrator and you know, the one thing the character probably knows their frickin name.

Yeah.

And so by using.

And I'm sorry, but with the best will in the world in Omniscient, you know what the one thing is that the omniscient, the writer knows the character's written.

In name.

But there is no excuse for doing this unless the character doesn't know the name.

Or there's a reason. I mean, you know, whatever the reason is. So that one chapter in Genesis that starts off kind of like this and then and it has weird lines, like he felt his body, you know, lean out the window and stuff like this. And you're like, wait a minute, What what? But then you see that he's in a dream.

Yeah, but that's.

That's kind of thing.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, unless the character doesn't know who they are or where they are for some reason, like, they are literally disconnected. Like, that is part of the whole schtick going on here, right? There is no reason to hide the name from the narrator. No. from the reader. None. None.

Unless there's a reason. But if there isn't a reason, so far there hasn't been. Yeah. Then it's just annoying.

Yeah. All right.

Pay off, then. You literally just annoyed someone for no reason. Yeah, you can annoy a reader and then they get to a certain point. They're like, That is so cool. I guess I was annoyed and now I feel cool because I get paid off for my own. But if it's annoying, like on the next page it says Susan, you know, I thought about approaching the robot but decided not to.

And it's like.

There or even worse when they're like they wait until the character has to say their name or somebody else has to say their name. And then they start referring to the character by name. And I'm like, What do you think this is? This does not pay off. right now. Okay, So just on that note, okay, so I'm not fond of the bards.

Did the ancients entire little justice? It feels like a line that is there just to give me the name.

What was that.

Stroke? The first. This line the boards did the ancient center. Little justice. I don't like it because I feel like it is a sentence that exists only to give me that word center.

And this is a great example of scroll up just a little bit. So we see that last line. Yeah, this is a great example of if there's no reason to hide it, it might be better for your reader. So like, but she was here for him, for the brass scintilla lurking just beyond the fire's choral glow. The Bards did the ancient robot little justice.

So it's normally, in my opinion, I try to give the name of something before I give the definition of it just kind of depends. I mean, if it's this weird. Yeah, I guess I don't know what a scintilla is and so I might describe it. So I might go for the brass center lurking beyond the fire's core glow.

And then, you know, maybe up there I give the description of it having no legs and, you know, holding itself up or whatever. So I'm, I'm describing it. And then down below I might say something like, you know, the bard did the ancient robot little justice. So it's the order.

I would cut this line like this. This kind of writing, in my opinion, benefits from a more minimalist approach. Yeah, this line adds nothing.

And I think it would add something to get in the robot side of it. But not the name.

Maybe. But you know, the other thing is I don't like the word indeed in pipes. Indeed. Because indeed is the implication of in place of and it's not implied nobody nobody's saying that pipes don't make up his bots. Look you know I mean so.

I prefer the writers trying to refer back to the fact that the tales had said that it was made up of pipes. And now we are saying, yes, indeed they do. But you're right, since I mean, we have the inner monologue thought. But that's I think that's what the writer's trying to point back to is the inner monologue dropping the fact that there is songs about this thing.

And so but there is other clear ways to say that as well know. And if we're going to do this, I think it's it's very ominous that's another and again, if this is written omniscient, which I kind of feel like it is, then this isn't bad. But if we were going to go for a more limited way, then on the second line, they found herself is again, that's the a third party narrator would be something they say instead if we wanted to be more limited.

Yet the girl fixated instead upon the bulky rock, you know, Yeah, it's more immediate. It's it's more in the moment. It's more of what the narrator is going to be doing.

Even even if this is on omniscient, I would still cut out, found herself.

It is overwriting, but I'm just saying.

That it's overwritten.

That definitely adds to the omniscient aspect of the writing.

But but omniscient or limited, I would cut that because I think it would read better, even even in the stall. So let's just put it like this. Wipes made up his bones. And why is he sinews yet? The girl fixated upon the bulky rock that pulsed amber, where a man's eyes would roost. And that just cuts out the extraneous words of indeed found herself.

And instead.

Yes.

And and it makes the sentences the same, but it makes the sentence, in my opinion, it strengthens the sentence overall in its structure, while retaining the power. Poetic prose.

Yeah. And a stronger way to tie it back to the songs. You literally go and like the tale said, the pipes made up its bones, you know, if we needed to. I'm not even saying we need to do that, but I'm saying I think that it's.

That's actually why that board line bugs me because she she talks about the tales. Then she says they did it little justice. Then she says that they did that. But in fact, you know, he does have pipes like make up your mind. Like, well, they but I really honestly don't know if they are male or female, but yeah, so yeah, right.

I have a little bit of like a flip flop there between which word goes. So I think that's why this line bugs me. This is fine. it was an assault mood swing. His head ratcheted toward her a whisker from its prey, the arms shuttered. Still, I don't know what that means.

I think they're trying to say that the girl is. It's. No, it was hammering something. So I guess she's again, this is we're using flowery words.

Yeah. Now, this this sentence is very unclear. Well, I actually can't pass up what it means.

I think that it's the hammer almost hit the anvil. And the anvil would be the prey of the hammer. But again, when you get really flowery and use the word pray, we're going that's a word that's going to bring in the image of, you know, predator prey. Yeah, it's not exactly hammer anvil. So that's just I think that's because I don't think he swung the hammer at the girl know.

So I think and again this is where.

Vision or a visitor now it is it is that is very unclear. So I would say is that if you're looking for a little bit more clarity because I mean you did send us in to be critique. If you're looking for a little bit more clarity, fix that line, make that more clear.

And again, this is why I am not a person who tries to write flowery prose because of the fact that I want to paint a picture for my reader. I don't want to just paint pretty prose. I mean, yeah, last story. We were at a Barnes Noble. This is five or years ago, but my wife brought me the Pulitzer Prize winning book that year and she's like, You got to read the back blurb of this.

And so I turned around and it said, and I'm not even kidding. This is a sales pitch. This is the sales pitch that gets you to want to buy the book. It said you will not read this book because of the dynamic characters, the interesting story or the amazing plot, because it has none of those. You will read it simply for the beauty of the sentence things that are written.

And I was like, No, no, no, I won't. Anyway. I'm just yeah, not that this is wrong. Again, this is a writing style. And you know, if this is what you do, I'm just definitely not the person to and I don't think you are either to, to critique this if this is the way you want to write because we're going to push against this because it's very antithetical to how we feel stories, you know, our writing style and our type of storytelling.

So I do I'll tolerate a lot more pretty prose as long as I can get enough of an image to make sense. Right? Right. Like this sentence lost me.

Right?

Okay, so.

Funny because it didn't lose me.

A bit. Lost me. A vision or a visitor is words buzzed like tiny bits of wood, shaken in a thin jar, the breasts rushing through her forbade Any answer? You seem real enough. A visitor then. But I receive no visitors this late. The robot twitched back to his forge, where a colossal mall's bazaar shops smoldered up an iron altar.

He heaved his hammer high in the same geometry as before. The sequence rippled across a constellation of hoses and hinges rubbed to a raw chrome okay.

Again, again, just a lot of sacrificing clarity for prettiness. Yeah. Although I will say it's just one line. Frickin love a visit or a visitor. His words buzzed like and I don't think it needs a comma. His words buzz like pits, like tiny pits of wood shaken and changed. I think the commas wrong. And then I do also love the brush rushing through her for being any answer like that.

That is the definition, in my opinion, of pretty prose that also paints a perfect picture like those two lines. Fantastic in every way. They are very well written, very pretty imagery, very pretty prose. But I 100% do not think that you will ever lose a reader in those. The next, you know, when you get into.

The section is a little bit.

Arbitrary and there's so much in there there's just like.

It also just feels excessive like the dude's just hammering, right? It's not all that in a bag of chips, right?

And that's the problem with a lot of people who write in this style. Yeah. Because everything needs to be, you know, as important as everything else.

Yeah.

And sometimes it's just it's just a rock wall. Like, it's just a mud puddle, but it doesn't have to be a massively dynamic way of describing a mud puddle. Sometimes it's just a mud puddle. But again, this is style. So we can't really we're not saying don't write this way. We're only talking about I mean, you send it to us and you see, hopefully you've seen how we edit and hopefully you've even read us.

That would also be really nice. So you actually know how we write. But that's why this is definitely not a piece that I would normally be comfortable critiquing because it is outside of my wheelhouse.

Again, Steam cried out in place of the annual. An audience of so rare listless sounds seep between Smith's words as though he were still finding the shapes of each consonant. Speak your task. The girl's fingertips found her throat, her pulse thrum through the steel dome around her chest. Holden sent me holding the Smith's snapped the vents of his fire closed, holding him.

He left. He lifted each wrist one at a time, glancing over his brass braces. Yes, Holden. She stepped forward. You know him? Are the apostate. You read from his forearm. This is not a speech like now. So this is on a purely grammatical level that should be a full stop. And he read from his forearm. Should be a connection.

Yeah. the apostate to read from his for all. You are his messenger, his ward, his student impatient. That hare failed in of yours. The Smiths loomed over her as much as his anvil. A week of work remains. I'm here for you. Not the. Yeah, I think like this actually is getting smoother or like into imagery

so.

I think love this author's

ability to craft dialog I mean we haven't gotten to deep Yeah I don't know anything about the girl and it's she's, it's like you know Alden Alden Alden Alden student like so we don't but man, the robot, I'm really, really dig in. So I love it when an author using just dialog can start showing me the character of the character.

And so, you know, I'm getting a lot of a sense of how this thing, everything from he's like vision or visitor. Like, I don't even know if you're real or not. And then, you know, we get in this like, okay, you seem real. So I'm just going to go with that. Like, all of this does a great job of building the character of this of this blacksmith, this robot.

So I'm digging all of that. And if and if they hold this and all this, But here's, here's the thing that, that now I'm, you know, I'm on deeper down. I'm two or three pages into this. And guess what I've completely forgotten about. I was I.

Opened the wound.

I was in a really cool raindrop.

Yeah.

Like it's gone. There's no payoff for. So it's pretty. Well, where's the payoff?

Yeah. And I think like, overall, I mean, clearly here the author's not writing as esoteric, right? So the whole novel isn't supposed to be esoteric. So given that there really is no need for this paragraph, but this perfect clarity over here, the Smiths snap the vent of his fire closed. So you don't need this excessive over here.

Basic. Basically, the advice would be this If this is the style that you want if you're a writer. So there's two types of writers. There's writers who write for themselves, which is there's nothing wrong with that. And then there's writers who understand that our job is to entertain others. So we're writing for others. So if you are writing for yourself, if you're writing to make yourself happy, then by God, do it like there is nothing wrong with it.

If this you happy but you but you understand there are no advantages, there's only tradeoffs. And so the tradeoff of you writing for yourself in this very pretty prose, where everything is this over-the-top kind of way of describing something that's going to make you happy, the tradeoff is it's going to make less other people happy, which means you're going to get less sales.

Maybe just factual, but there's nothing wrong with that. Again, not everyone has the same goals, the same motivations, the same drives, you know, in writing. So this is not a negative thing. There's there's nothing there. The advice, if you're coming to us and saying, all right, what do I need to do with this? The advice I think both of us are saying is, keep your pretty prose.

Just balance it, balance it to where your reader always knows what they're supposed to be seeing, knows where they're at, No, screw their heads in. And then like, you know, I already pointed out there's a couple of lines in that that, you know, first part of that dialog, they're just beautifully written and also have beautiful imagery and also have beautiful grounding imagery that I completely understand what's going on.

Now. There are other things like the line after that was her fingers found her throat. Yeah. I don't I try to stay away from stuff like that because of the fact that I don't want to personify her fingers. I want her actually doing things. I want her being active in the story. And again, when you say stuff like her fingers down her throat, that's more omniscient as opposed to, you know, she fingered her throat.

Which that a touch.

To throw whatever it's it's more active, it's more in the moment. It's more limited. But again, that's just the difference between writing omniscient versus limited. So that's not a you need to do this or do that. It's if you're going to write in a more omniscient way, then this is the way you're doing it. If you want to, you know, step over into the much more limited way that tends to be what more readers today are looking for in their in their novels.

Just because that's where we're at as a society. That's that's what they're looking for. Then, you know, you're looking at avoiding stuff like that because it does tend to feel more omniscient to a reader. So beautifully written couple typos like there was a comma up there. You know, you obviously pointed out the backseat. He read this one. That's not a speech tag.

So you kind of you want to explain that or you want me to like what.

We're looking for the speech that. Yeah,

yeah. I so I so speech lag is directly identifying who said the thing maybe a little bit about how they said it, how they said.

How they said who said it and how they said it.

Yeah but it is, it is like so it's he said he shouted, he whispered, he thundered maybe he or Right. Did he. He expounded those are all potential speech.

That's right. Not that.

You create from his for is very much an action that he is doing.

Right.

It's not a speech that it doesn't tell me anything about how he said it. So what you want to do is you want to use your paragraph structure and the actions the person takes to identify the speaker and you want to avoid your speech tags if you can.

But what I'm.

I think I ate the whole pie was the.

Look. That's good. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean I think our major advice to this author be to consider trimming down a little bit and making those pretty prose lines a little clearer and considered and and I mean you've got a strength here with your dialog. You've got a strength with your, with your prose. Your prose is beautiful, but if you can maybe make it a little clearer, I think you would go a long way with this.

I mean, so like I read the Dito Street station at China, I'm able it, I got through it, but I got through it with effort and I've never read anything else of his. You know, I am not saying that you like. And China movil is a published author with awards with like you a lot of books, you know, and his prose is very heavy to get that for me For me, it's very heavy

So there is an audience for but the thing that got me through China, Mabel's prose or Melville or however you say his surname. is I could still find a certain amount of clarity in what's going on. I never had the point where I was like sitting with with, with a line. One or two of these lines were gone. I don't understand this line.

Like, I don't understand what it's trying to communicate at all.

Yeah, it's, it's there's no advantages. Me writing, no pretty prose is an advantage over somebody who's writing only pretty prose. There's only trade offs. So, you know, what do I get? I get an immediacy, I get a visceralness. I get an immersion factor that is unparalleled. When when you read me, you never, ever see the words you're reading, ever.

You're just in the. The moment, the time, the the event, the everything. What is my trade off? Well, I don't have a unique author voice because it's all just visceral ness. I don't have pretty prose. I don't have the things that award, you know, the hoity toity award ceremony. People are going to be like, Drake is a great writer because of this stuff.

I'm never going to get that. And that's my trade off, and I'm fine with that.

Yeah.

When you go all pretty prose now you're losing. I mean, what I get are friends, I get readers, I don't get academics, I don't get people who give awards. I don't get It was always harder for me now I've walked away from the industry, but that was one of the things that I always struggle with in the industry is because even acquisition editors are looking for pretty prose.

So I got rejected more. Well, I never really got rejected ever. It's just been it. But that was the thing. When they would read me, that would be their feedback on me was they would be like, you know, I want to see more of a voice, an author voice in your writing. my fans never say that stuff, you know, They're they're.

my God. I feel like I'm there. I feel like I'm living the moment. I feel like, you know, I like one of my favorite of yours. I just ordered a banner stand and it was an older one, and I forgot about this review, But it's a fan review and it says, When I'm reading Drake, I have to occasionally look up and blink to remind myself that I'm in the real world.

Like those are the reviews that I want. And so I trade off that if you go too heavy on the pretty prose, you're going to lose the average reader, You're going to lose the people. The mass market. Again, I want to be a mass market writer. I want to have as many people buying my book as I can possibly get by my book.

So I cast the widest net. It just depends on what you're trying to do. There's no right or wrong way. So we're not saying that. Beautifully written. And I'll tell you the same thing that that reviewer told me. I think you can do both. You kind of proved it in there. Yeah, I think you can write pretty. And also keep your reader grounded in what's.

Not a not lose the reader. Yeah. So I think I'd look at those sentences where we said we got lost and think about how you can make those a little clearer and bring the readers who want to more see.

And I don't know who you are. Yeah, so this may be difficult, but the reality is that sometimes a mud puddles this mud like you don't have to have every single line be this extravagant work of art. You just don't. You don't. It's exhausting. It's like. So I this month I'm doing my show. Don't tell class.

If you wrote every single line of your book being showy, it's going to turn people.

It's too much. It's it's. It's like we need balance. And so it's the same thing with this. Like, if every single line is this smorgasbord of, you know, poetic imagery, that's not a novel. I mean, why do you think poems are one page long? It's because because that's what a lot of people can stomach. When you get into long form fiction, when you have that much imagery constantly berating them, it's going to wear on them and they're going to it's going to lose its effect.

It's like what we talk about all the time, where we talk about using repetitive words or using fragmented sentences or using one word sentences. They are very, very powerful. If you don't overused sparingly.

Used sparingly, they're very, very powerful, used, overdone. It feels like too.

Much, right? They just they just lose their power. Yeah. And so I feel like that's what we have here. So, again, this is a style choice, though. So we can't say, don't you know this is bad? Yeah, this is the style you want to do. Then everything we just said over the last 30 or 45 minutes or so is worthless to you because you're going to be like, No, don't care, don't.

But but at that point I'm just like, Why did you even send it?

It like then if, if, if that is absolutely the style you want to write it. And if you are looking to write China style find a writing group that caters to that style because you need a very specific kind of critique and you're going to be like, we struggle. We struggle to be the right piece. People do critique, right?

Well, no. I mean, we were very there's a comma and one of those sentences need to go and you messed up.

Yeah, but that's not useful. Like, that's not, you know.

It fixes the thing that.

Yeah.

Story standpoint, if you're going to do something like that drop at the beginning, it needs to tie in somehow. Yeah. Now we didn't read the whole thing so maybe the author's like, but it does. You just didn't get there. Okay, great. If it does get there, eventually, it's, you know, that's a lot of time for a callback for only one paragraph, but it really depends on It's the same thing with using she instead of Jane.

If

it has a payoff that

warrants the time difference, then great.

But you know, it all comes down to pay offs and that's what readers want. They're looking for that payoff. You know, if you're going to annoy me with this.

what do I get? amazing. If she swallowed the raindrop and then we became the girl.

Depends on what they're doing. But yeah.

That would have been so cool. Would have been if.

Or if we'd stayed the raindrop. But we just took control of the girl now we don't know her name because we're parasites inside of her. Controlling her brain.

But that is certainly a payoff for not knowing her name as well. And then she gets to. I was just thinking in terms of like, control. Susan, if you you know, if the girl swallows the raindrop and it breaks apart on her tongue and then suddenly you're the girl, it makes for a very interesting imagery, imagery.

But yeah, I mean, so it definitely is the wrong type of thing for us to critique on a line by line basis, which is unfortunately, when you're in a writer's group that's kind of what you're doing.

But that would be our advice. It's just, you know, same advice that was given to me. I think you could do both.

I think you could write pretty and ground your reader.

And I hope that you found value in this. It's not our normal style of critique, but I hope that you find value in this. And I think that that is a good note to end this episode, and we will see you soon for another one. Bye.

Thank you for tuning in. This is Marie Melanie, your co-host on this literary adventure. Our goal is to provide you with valuable insights and discussions on writing. If you believe in our mission, please like and subscribe our podcast. Sharing our episodes with your community

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